Renard takes emergency charge of Tunisia after 5-1 collapse at World Cup 2026

Hervé Renard has been appointed Tunisia head coach for their remaining two World Cup group games after the North African side fired Sabri Lamouchi on Tuesday, following a 5-1 opening defeat to Sweden on Sunday.

The 57-year-old Frenchman takes charge with just four days to prepare before Tunisia faces Japan on Saturday in Monterrey, Mexico. They then meet group favourites Netherlands in Kansas City on 25 June. Renard must guide the side out of the group stage — something he has never achieved at a men’s World Cup — within the space of ten days.

This is Renard’s third consecutive men’s World Cup, and remarkably his third with a different team. He coached Morocco in 2018, Saudi Arabia in 2022, and now steps in for Tunisia in 2026. In between, he led France’s women to the 2023 Women’s World Cup and the 2024 Paris Olympics, both campaigns ending at the quarterfinal stage.

Renard’s most celebrated World Cup moment came in Qatar in 2022, when he guided Saudi Arabia to a stunning 2-1 victory over eventual champions Argentina — a result that stands among the biggest upsets in the tournament’s history. He was dismissed by Saudi Arabia just two months ago despite steering them through a difficult qualifying campaign.

Tunisia becomes the sixth African football federation to appoint Renard, a testament to the reputation he built on the continent. He made history by winning the Africa Cup of Nations with two different nations: Zambia in 2012 and Ivory Coast in 2015 — a feat no other coach has matched.

Renard first attracted wider attention in 2004 as assistant to Claude Le Roy at English lower-league side Cambridge City, a long way removed from the World Cup stages he now routinely inhabits. His trademark open-necked white shirt and composed touchline presence have become as recognisable at major tournaments as the coaches who planned their campaigns months in advance.

For Morocco in 2018, Renard could not advance from a group containing Spain, Portugal and Iran, despite the team showing the early promise that would eventually carry them to the 2022 semifinals under a different manager. The pattern of near-misses at the group stage makes Tunisia’s situation both familiar territory and unfinished business for one of football’s most peripatetic coaches.